Page 269 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

it must have well-defined 'building blocks' (lexical words, that is), which can be combined into full signs (sentences) and correspond regularly with structural parts of thoughts, in particular 'predicates' (in the sense of bundles of satisfaction conditions). It is cus- tomary to speak of conventional signs not only when referring to full sentences but also in the case of lexical words.
To be able to interpret a conventional sign onemust know the convention according to which its mental significate, whether full thought or predicate, has been fixed. In the case of a language, this 'convention' con- sists of a rule system or 'grammar' mapping sentences and thought schemata onto each other, in com- bination with a 'lexicon,' which lists the words to be used in the sentences of the language. Although it is widely accepted nowadays that world knowledge is a necessary prerequisite for the adequate com- prehension of sentences, there still is a fundamental difference between world knowledge and linguistic knowledge. The former is about facts irrespective of conventional sign systems. The latter is specifically about conventionallinguisticsignsystems.
5. The Referential Aspect
Thoughts are by their very nature intentional, i.e., about something. This may be termed their 'referential aspect.' It follows that the reconstruction of a given thought by a perceiving subject necessarily involves a copying of its referential aspect. In fact, in most speech situations the perceiver will not be primarily interested in the speaker's thought but rather in what the thought is about, i.e., its referential aspect. The transfer of thought is often only a means towards the end of organizing the actual world. This is what made Ock- ham introduce his notion of subordination, the fact that, as Locke said, men 'often suppose the words to stand also for the reality of things,' as seen above. The referential aspect, though primarily a property of thoughts (and their predicates), thus automatically carries over to sentences and words. But it must be remembered, as Locke keeps stressing, that linguistic forms possess their referential aspect only as a derived property, mediated by the thoughts and their predi- cates (ideas), which carry the referential aspect as their primary property.
An adequate analysis of the notion of sign helps to see language and language use in their proper eco- logical setting. When language is used the listener (reader) makes a mental reconstruction of the thought process expressed by the speaker (writer), including the latter's commitment or stance ('mode of enter- tainment') with regard to what is referred to. In prin- ciple, the certainty systematically induced by the occurrence of a linguistic sign in virtue of the con- ventional sign system at hand extends primarily only to the presence of the thought process concerned. Any relation to the real world is mediated by the thought
processes, and any certainty about real world con- ditions induced by a linguistic message depends on external factors such as the speaker's reliability, not on the linguistic system in terms of which the message is presented.
6. The Price for Neglecting the Notion of Sign
This obvious and important fact has, however, not always been recognized. There is a tradition, which originated with Descartes and has had something of a career in the philosophy of perception, where con- ventional linguistic signs are taken as prototypical of, or at least parallel to, the physical sense data impinging on the senses. At the beginning of his essay 'The world, or essay on light,' Descartes argues, in the wider context of his rationalist theory of innate ideas, that physical sense data have nothing in common with the mental sensations or ideas evoked by them. Hence, he concludes, the mental sensations must have an independent source, besides the physical stimuli, which determines their qualities. This independent source is a set of innate principles and ideas. In setting up his argument he draws a parallel with words:
You know well that words, which bear no resemblance to the things they signify, nevertheless succeed in making usawareofthem,oftenevenwithoutourpaying attention to the sounds or syllables. Whence it may happen that having heard a stretch of speech whose meaning we understood full well, we cannot say in what language it was pronounced. Now, if words, which signify nothing except by human convention, suffice to make us aware of things to which they bear no resemblance, why could not Nature also have established a certain sign that makes us have the sensation of light even though this sign has nothing in itself resembling this sensation? Is this not also how she has established laughs and tears, to let us read joy and sadness on the faces of men? (author's translation)
(Adam and Tannery, vol. xi: 4)
This parallel between linguistic signs on the one hand and sense data on the other is, of course, entirely spurious and confused. Descartes himself seems some- what unconvinced by it as well. He continues to say that some might object that in the case of speech sounds the parallel is not the awareness of things but rather the 'acoustic image' that corresponds to the sound. Even so, he says, it all happens in the mind, and he cuts the argument short not wishing 'to lose time over this point.'
Nevertheless, 'this analogy will make quite a career in seventeenth and eighteenth century theories of per- ception (e.g., those of Berkeley and Reid) and, with new theoretical implications, it will also figure promi- nently in Helmholtz's cognitive theory of perception' (Meijering 1981:113). Quite recently it was seen crop- ping up again in Fodor's book The Modularity of Mind:
Now about language: Just as patterns of visual energy arriving at the retina are correlated, in a complicated but
Sign
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